


Graves Aren't For The Dead

by lilolilyrae



Series: Reunions and Confessions [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andronilynh, Andy | Andromache of Scythia Regains Immortality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Good Quynh | Noriko, The Old Guard Femslash Fortnight, andromaquynh, pre-Andy/Quynh/Nile but can mostly be read as just friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 16:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30041559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilolilyrae/pseuds/lilolilyrae
Summary: The team has buried Andromache after she died, thinking the immortal warrior has finally come to rest.A month later, Nile gets a text from the dead...
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Series: Reunions and Confessions [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2210460
Comments: 13
Kudos: 55
Collections: The Old Guard Femslash Fortnight





	Graves Aren't For The Dead

**Author's Note:**

> For the Femslash Fortnight Sunday prompt: reunion :) though actually I planned to write a shorter piece for 'confession', and then had the idea of this as a prequel to it :D thankfully, it fits to today's other prompt!

They give Andy a Funeral.  
She had never been religious or cared about burial ceremonies in the past several Millennia, plus she had always been good at adopting to whatever were the current habits, so it's a modern one, with a fancy coffin and all the fanfare.

Nile cries.  
Booker isn't drinking, which on its own is a tribute to her.  
Joe and Nicky are holding onto themselves even as Joe is giving his speech.

Quỳnh is just feeling numb.

But life has to go on, especially when you're immortal.

* * *

When Andy wakes, it is dark around her.

For a moment, she thinks she is still in the ship container at the harbor where she had gotten into a gunfight, but- no, the ceiling is too close (as she notices hitting her head trying to sit up), she's smelling strange and there are, what, dried flowers all over her?!

Then it hits her.

_Well, fuck._

Groping around through her surroundings, she tries to assess her situation.

Alright, she's in a large coffin, giving her about six or seven hours of air. She still- or rather, again, given that she smells quite embalmed- has her clothes, there are several trinkets by her side, a sword that might be helpful in breaking out, statuettes, more flowers, a picture frame, and- oh thank goodness, they buried her with her phone, and it still turns on.

Andy could have cried.  
Now no-one will ever be able to convince her of the superiority of a smartphone to her old Nokia.  
She's even got reception!

Well, here's to hoping someone is going to read the message, and soon.

* * *

Nile gets the text right while they're in the middle of a mission.

She's the only one with her phone turned on instead of only the earpiece as she's sitting in their hotel room across the street from the target, coordinating everything.

They've been switching through the jobs since Andy is gone, and she finds that while she is a great fighter, getting better and better with all kinds of weapons, she enjoys this part best- especially when she has Quỳnh by her side, though this time the other woman is all dressed up and only connected to her through an earpiece as they had needed a man and a woman to infiltrate the mafia's ball.

Nicky is in a sniper's nest on the roof of Nile's hotel even though he would have preferred to be undercover in the one across the street to be closer to Quỳnh and Joe, Booker on get-away car duty.

Nile herself is looking at the hacked security cam footage on her laptop, almost ready to give Quỳnh the go-ahead when her phone lights up, and she would have almost screamed.

> _You fuckers buried me alive!_
> 
> _Have approx 6h left, if you're not getting me out in 3 I'm trying my luck myself._

Staring for a moment, Nile then slaps the laptop shut and jumps up.

"Abort mission! Abort Mission immediately!" she tries not to yell so as not to make the others' earpieces screech, but she can't help getting louder. "Abort mission, do you copy? Do. You. Copy?!"

“Copy, on my way,” comes from Booker, and "Copy," Nicky says, though there isn't the tell-tale sound of taking apart his weaponry yet, not until Joe and Quỳnh made it out, of course. A minute, two minutes of silence, Nile is itching to run, but she knows she can't abandon her team just like that-

"Copy," Quỳnh hisses. "On the back exit stairwell now. Booker?"  
"Almost there- I can see you," he says, and Nile almost sighs in relief now that they will be able to go get Andy.

Then she freezes.

Three hours is a tight timeframe, especially not just getting there but also getting her out – though it is lucky it is late evening already, that means less people noticing someone robbing a grave – but does she want to waste time trying to explain to the others what is going on? And also... What if it is, somehow, a trap? She can't risk it not being one and leaving Andy to suffocate, but she also can't drag the whole team into it if it is one.

And Quỳnh… she has barely started to live again since Andy's death – _presumed_ death. This would devastate her, giving her hope if it turned out that Andy was still really dead in the end.

"On our way to you now, get ready to jump in," Booker tells them, and while there's finally the sound of Nicky taking down his rifle, Nile makes her decision.

"Nicky, get my things, Book, get Nicky and get out of here, rendezvous in four hours in safe-house Delta, and- be careful, I'm not even sure myself that this isn't a trap."

With that, she takes out her earpiece and crushes it, it's never a good idea to leave that where someone might find it while the others are still wearing theirs. She leaves both phone and laptop, and then she's hurrying along the corridor and down the stairs outside to the service entrance, looking for a car to steal.

* * *

When the three hours are almost up according to the dim green light of her phone screen, Andy hears a roaring sound.

 _Fuck_ , is it daytime and someone's working on the cemetery? Her phone screen showing 1am and the overall darkness had her think that it must be night and at least her little zombie adventure would go unnoticed, but of course the display could be wrong or from another time zone, she has no idea where she is even buried...

Then, the earth around her starts shaking, and Andy sucks in a breath as, moments later, she feels the coffin being lifted into the air.

 _Motherfucker_.

Whoever got her message really went 'go big or go home'.

* * *

Bringing the earthmover to a stop close to the ground, Nile jumps out, briefly looking around to confirm there aren’t any cops or other security people around before she runs to the shovel.

“Andy?”

There’s definitely someone moving inside, and a voice asks “…Nile?

Nile grins and tears are forming in her eyes, but she forces herself to ignore them. “Just one sec, yeah-“

She pushes most of the earth off of the coffin before fumbling to open it. There was still some dirt left on the cover, and it rains down on Andy as she sits up, blinking in the dim light and spitting out dirt.

“Fuck, now I really feel like a zombie.”

Nile laughs in relief. “You kind of look like one, too,” she can’t help giggling as she helps her out of the casket, down from the shovel.

“And I _smell!_ ” Andy groans, making Nile laugh even harder as she pulls her into her arms.  
“That's the embalming,” she tells her. “You never did tell us what kind of funeral you want, so we just let them make all the fancy normal, uh, modern stuff…” trailing off, Nile buries her face in the crook of Andy’s neck. She does smell weird, and her skin feels oddly stiff, but still so very alive in her arms.

“Yeah, I figured,” Andy murmurs, and then, “Nile, where are the others?”

“Oh- I," Nile draws back, wiping her nose and eyes on her sleeve, possibly dragging dirt through her own face with it. “I got your text and I just went to get you as quickly as possible without explaining anything… We’re supposed to meet up at the safehouse in less than an hour, though.”

Andy nods, looking a little relieved at that. “They haven’t forgotten about you or anything,” Nile tells her. “It’s only been about a month, anyway. I’m sure they’d have dropped everything to come get you too immediately, I just thought it would be quicker this way, and, well, I wasn’t sure it wasn’t another trap…”

Andy nods, then shivers. “A month? I was- I was in there for a _month?_ ”

Nile blinks. At Andy’s survival, she hadn’t much started to consider how strange it all was, more concerned with her being alive at all.

“The longest it ever took was a day,” Andy mumbles to herself. “And that involved being blown apart _and_ radiation.”

Nile bites her lip. She has no idea what to say to the other woman, how to reassure her – whether there even is anything to reassure her with. What if from now on, every time Andy dies, she’ll be gone for weeks? How are they even going to know whether she’ll come back at all?

“I- look, let’s just go to the safe house now? We can- I’m sure we can figure it all out later…” it’s a weak promise, but Andy nods, coming out of her stupor.

“Let’s move.”

Giving her hand a last squeeze, Nile climbs into the driver’s seat of the earthmover, letting Andy sit down next to her before she starts the ignition, carefully moving the shovel back up in a more secure position for the coffin before she starts to hightail out of there.  
  
Once on the street, Andy speaks up again.

"Not that I don't appreciate you picking me up, but why are we taking my former residence with us?" he asks so drily, Nile wants to laugh and cry at the same time, the familiarity of it hurts too much. She had thought that she would never hear the other woman joke around like that again. Still, she forces her eyes to stay dry and her focus to stay on the road.

"This way, this is just grave robbery. We need to burn or at least wipe the coffin if we don't want anyone to find fingerprints or other signs of you rising from the grave."  
Andy blinks. She hadn't considered that.

* * *

Back at the safehouse, it doesn't take long for the others to arrive. They're going in with their weapons drawn, Nile's warning about it possibly being a trap heavy on their minds, keeping them on high alert.

Nicky freezes when he hears voices from the inside, holding up his hand and making the others halt in their tracks. And- is that a sobbing inside, is Nile being threatened by someone enough to make her cry?! No, someone is shushing her, murmuring comforting words too quiet to be understood-

Quỳnh drops her gun and barely manages to hold onto the knife in her other hand as it also threatens to slip from her grasp.

She _knows_ that voice.

A low, keening sound breaks through the air, and she doesn't even notice that it is coming from her. Joe and Booker are by her side within moments, helping to hold her upright- and then the front door of the house opens, and Quỳnh bites her lip hard enough to draw blood.

_Andy._

Andromache the Scythian, as she was in life, standing proud and tall in the entryway.  
It has to be a hallucination, it _must_ be. She's not looking quite right either, a strange gleam to her skin, just Quỳnh's mind playing tricks on her.

"Hey, y’alls," Nile is coming up behind Andy, grinning with tears in her eyes, and Quỳnh shakes her head.  
No. No, that just means Nile is part of the hallucination, of her own fucked-up mind trying to come up with a scenario in which Andromache is alive. No. No, it _can't_ be happening.

But then, Joe is squeezing her arm trying to push her forward, and when she looks at her other side Booker is giving her a nod and a "I can see her, too," and Quỳnh is stumbling forward-

With a sob, she buries her nose in Andromache's neck as strong and very real arms encircle her back and hold her close. She smells strange, and her skin feels weird to her touch, but she still undeniably feels like Andy.

" _Andromache_ ," Quỳnh sobs. The keening sound stops, and she only now notices that it must have been coming from herself. Her hands fly up to claw at Andy's shoulders, her back, anything she can reach.

"Andromache, we thought you were dead, we thought you were dead- I swear, we thought you had died, or I wouldn't have-" Another sob leaves her shaking as she thinks about Andy being caught in a prison not dissimilar to her own fate back in the ocean, though Andy's coffin was wood and under the earth.

"Sh-sh," Andy mumbles into her hair, holding her tightly against her body, and why is _she_ trying to comfort _Quỳnh_ right now? She's not the one who was buried alive. "Sh-sh, Quynh, I'm here, I'm really here..."

Turning her head enough to look at her, Quỳnh first feels Andy shift too, then meets her beautiful, brilliant green eyes. "Andromache," her voice is rough from crying, though the feeling disappears within a moment. "Andromache, you are _alive_."

Andy gives her a wet grin, and then she starts to laugh, in pure happiness and delight, and Quỳnh can't help doing the same, though she is still shaking with something other than laughter.

As she is still hugging Andy, the men step closer, giving her a one-armed hug too or in Joe's case kissing Andy's forehead.

They're all together again.  
Goodness, it feels wonderful.  
  
"Um, guys?" Nile interrupts their reuinion. "Not to interrupt, but we've got a stolen earthmover and the coffin of an undead woman hidden in the forest, and we can't really leave it there...”

Quỳnh snorts. Right. Thank fuck to the youngest member of their team for at least keeping her wits. _Or perhaps just regaining them quicker_ , she thinks as she remembers Nile's earlier sobbing…

* * *

Once they are finally on the way to another safe house to stay at for the night, sitting in a half empty compartment of a container train, Quỳnh against the wall with Andy leaning her back to her front, sitting between her legs, she feels like she is able to breathe again.

Andy is fine, alive, she knows now that the weird smell is just the formaldehyde from the embalming, also leading to the strange texture of her skin as Andy's immortal body is getting rid of the substance.  
 _Immortal_ , Andromache is immortal again. And Nile saved her from her grave. Quỳnh will have to thank her properly, once she has processed all of this more fully.

"How did you know," she asks her now, looking to the young woman on the other side of the compartment. "How did you manage to-"

"She texted me," Nile blushes. "I don't have any secret, uh, sixth survival sense."

"She- texted you." Quỳnh blinks, and then she starts to giggle.

Oh dear, now she will have to thank not just Nile but also Booker for putting Andy's own phone into the coffin as an offering instead of any item of more sentimental value.

 _"What? In ancient Egypt they believed that people could only use the things they're buried with in the afterlife. What if everyone has a phone there and Andy doesn't even have her old thing?_ " she remembers him say. Now, Andromache actually needed it in her not quite _after_ -life.

Wait.

"If she texted you- Niccolò, you picked up Nile's phone..."

Nicky shifts on his spot next to Joe. "Yes, well, we thought it best not to tell you until we knew for sure."

" _We?_ " Quỳnh asks, a dangerous note in her voice, her arms tightening around Andromache

Joe puts a protective arm around Nicky’s shoulders. “Sorry for keeping you in the dark, Quỳnh. We only didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Or for you to run right into a trap,” Booker grumbles. “I for one didn’t really believe that Andy made it back this time.”

“Right.” Quỳnh sighs. She doesn’t have the energy to fight them on the issue, and really, she knows that they’re not exactly wrong.

"So, we can really never die, huh." Nile murmurs from across the compartment, sounding lost in her thoughts.

Quỳnh shakes her head. “Of course we can die, Lykon-“

"Might have also risen from the grave," Nile argues. "You would have never known, now would you? You didn't have phones yet, and after you left him there-"

"We had our meeting points," Quỳnh gently explains, rubbing Andy's hand as she feels the other react to Nile's words with a mix of hope both to see Lykon again and to be immortal for real, and terror at the thought of true infinity of life. "If he was alive, he could have waited for us at any such spot, we still used them after his death just the same. Plus, wouldn't you have dreamt of him?"

Nile doesn't look entirely convinced, and Andy is playing with Quỳnh's hand in a nervous tell. Quỳnh sighs. "Joe, I know you can draw him when we describe him to you- think you can manage something good enough to give to Copley to run facial recognition?"

Joe blinks. "Yes, sure. You just tell me once he looks right."  
Quỳnh nods, pressing her forehead against Andy's back.

"Just to be sure," she mumbles, and Andy nods, turning in her arms to peck her on the cheek.

"Just to make sure."

* * *

That night, after showering, eating and stowing away their guns and mission intel to be re-evaluated some other time, they are all sleeping in the one queen-sized bed in the safe house.

Quỳnh really just wants Andy for herself, wants to talk to her, touch her more now that she doesn't smell like a funeral home anymore, but she understands that the others also have a right to be close to her right now.

Booker is curled up somewhere next to her pillow, Yusuf and Niccolò at the foot of the bed, and Nile on Andromache's other side, face mushed into Andy's shoulder.

Quỳnh smiles at the sight. She doesn't know for sure yet whether Nile is interested in the both of them, but she thinks she might be, and she knows both her and Andromache would be open to her advances. Now that they aren't worried about getting as much time together as they can before Andy's death, at least. Back when they had still thought that Andy was mortal, she also hadn’t wanted to break Nile’s heart, and knowing that she couldn’t argue the point by saying that her own heart wouldn’t break at her death, Quỳnh also hadn’t wanted to drag Nile into the misery with her. Now, though… Thinking back to the weeks after Andy's 'death', Quỳnh thinks that Nile also showed interest in her, though always subdued enough not to be pushing, most likely knowing full well that Quỳnh would keep grieving Andromache for a long while yet. Considerate, understanding- Quỳnh likes that in a partner.

And she _is_ a sweet thing. Yes, Quỳnh thinks she wouldn't mind Nile sharing their bed for longer than this one night.  
  


Andy shifts against her, pulling her closer into her arms, half on top of her body now.

"Sleep, Quỳnh." she mumbles into her hair, sounding miffed about her still being awake. “Stop _thinking_.”

"You too, then" Quỳnh replies, though she has to yawn. Throwing a leg over Andy's, she snuggles up to her, breathing her scent.

Booker's foot is still somewhat squished against her back, and she can't stretch her legs as much as she'd like to with Joe and Nicky in the way, but Quỳnh doesn't care.

It’s the most comfortable she has been in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> I left the mechanics of Andy's renewed immortality vague on purpose so everyone can make up their own mind re: whether her healing factor had just slowed down due to a bad illness, or whether her mortality had come and gone... 
> 
> If you liked it, let me know! I might post a shorter follow-up later tonight, if you leave a comment I'll tell you when I upload!


End file.
